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A House as a Symbol of Openness

DePauw president Brian Casey, center, greets student ambassadors, Jeanette Jones, left, and Aurora Flores as they arrive for a dinner party in his Greencastle, Ind., home, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009. Credit
A.J. Mast for The New York Times

GREENCASTLE, Ind.

WHEN Brian W. Casey was interviewing for the job of president of DePauw University here, what he found most daunting was not the prospect of raising the profile of this liberal arts college, or winning over the faculty and students.

What worried him was The House.

The president’s house is a formal Colonial Revival-style building at the edge of this small liberal arts campus here in rural Greencastle, 45 minutes southwest of Indianapolis. Since 1925, every DePauw president had lived in the house — with his wife.

Dr. Casey was the only finalist who did not ask to see the house, and when he saw it, his face fell. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure it works for you, Brian,” one of the trustees, Sarah Wallace, the head of the search committee, whispered to him.

Dr. Casey, a historian and former associate academic dean at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is 46 and single, which makes him an anomaly among college presidents. A 2006 study by the American Council on Education found that 73 percent of college presidents were male, and 89 percent of them were married.

It wasn’t just the prospect of living alone in the three-story house that daunted him, Dr. Casey said. It was the social duties that came with it. Even the official name of the house — The Elms — seemed formidable.

Now, as he begins his second year leading the university, Dr. Casey has not only adjusted to living at The Elms, he has also reinvented the house and its role on campus. He regularly invites professors, students, staff members and visitors to the house, which has shed its heavy drapes and visually become more open and welcoming.

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Since becoming president of DePauw University last year, Brian W. Casey has reimagined his official residence -- a Colonial Revivial-style house called The Elms -- and its role on campus. To make it more transparent, he has removed the curtains from the front doors and opened the place to students, professors, staff members and trustees.Credit
A.J. Mast for The New York Times

He wanted to use the house as “an engine for change,” he said. “It’s become a place of talk and conversation and debate — what a house on campus ought to be.”

He has made The Elms the place to be on campus, and there is nothing exclusive about it.

“The house has become a metaphor for what Brian is doing with the whole campus,” said Lisa Hollander, DePauw’s vice president for alumni relations. “Warming it up, opening it up.”

Greg Schwipps, an English professor, novelist and 1995 DePauw graduate, recalled his excitement last fall as he prepared to attend the first of a series of small working faculty dinners at Dr. Casey’s house. In his 12 years as a faculty member, he had never stepped foot inside the president’s house. He had received invitations to annual receptions, he said, but as a junior professor, he had always felt too intimidated to show up.

“I said to one of my students, ‘I’m invited to the president’s house for dinner,’ ” Professor Schwipps said. “He said, ‘Cool, I’ve already been twice.’ ”

By the time they had made Dr. Casey the leading finalist, the trustees were captivated by his passion and plan for transforming DePauw into one of the nation’s very best small liberal arts colleges.

He had a law degree from Stanford, two graduate degrees in history from Harvard and an undergraduate degree in philosophy and economics from Notre Dame, where he was captain of the swim team. Ebullient and youthful, he was already connecting with students.

The one question, for Dr. Casey and, fleetingly, for a few trustees, was about a single guy serving as the host at The Elms. “Entertaining, for me, when I lived in Boston and New York, was telling everyone what restaurant we’re all going to meet at,” he said. “I can’t cook a thing. I’d never thrown a huge dinner party, I’d never done any of this. And all of a sudden I realized it was part of the job I hadn’t thought of at all.”

His talent, he said, was for being a guest at parties. “I was always the person who took care of the music. I’d burn CD’s, or bring my iPod.”

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At a recent dinner, Dr. Casey, left, joked with Chuck Iikubo, a trustee.Credit
A.J. Mast for The New York Times

The previous president, Robert Bottoms, who is widely admired for diversifying the college and building the endowment and had retired after 22 years, had relied on his wife, Gwen, as the hostess of The Elms. He could not have done the job without her, Dr. Bottoms said. “She was kind of like the first lady of DePauw,” he said.

“I don’t have Mrs. Brian Casey,” Dr. Casey said. “I don’t have the partner who is going to do this with me.”

But he told the search committee he’d come up with a solution to the matter of the president’s house. He would simply invite everyone for regular dinners and parties. As for his lack of a spouse, he would enlist the help of a group of students as his co-hosts.

“I loved that idea,” Ms. Hollander said. “We have the most social student body. That sounded so right.”

Last Thursday night, Dr. Casey held the annual trustees dinner, with his 13 student ambassadors at his side.

“This place is more alive than it’s ever been,” said Kathy Hubbard, a trustee, looking around at the multigenerational crush of 96 guests ranging in age from 20 to over 60,

Trustees and their spouses mingled with professors and staff members. After checking to make sure his iPod was ready with the playlist he had created for the evening (including John Coltrane — “In a Sentimental Mood,” Astrud Gilberto — “Corcovado,” Diana Krall — “’Deed I Do” ), a smiling Dr. Casey was making the rounds.

Matt Jennings, 23, a new trustee and 2009 DePauw graduate who is now with Teach for America, recalled returning last fall from studying in Paris. Dr. Casey walked him around campus and described the DePauw he wanted to create. “On that day,” Mr. Jennings said, “I realized I loved Greencastle more than Paris.”

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The private part of the house has a living room with modern sofas and zebra-print coffee tables.Credit
A.J. Mast for The New York Times

It was close to 11 when the last guests left, still exclaiming over the after-dinner performance by Adam Gilbert, a student ambassador, of Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” and Broadway show tunes (piano accompaniment provided by a trustee, James B. Stewart, the journalist and author). With the party over, Dr. Casey offered a tour of the house, starting at the front door.

“I walked in, and I thought, ‘I can’t live here,’ ” he said, recalling his first visit. He waved his hand at the long sweep of hallway. “It’s 114 feet to the other end.”

One of his first acts as president was to remove the curtains covering the glass panes of the front doors. “I wanted people to see in,” he said. Such gestures carried a lot of weight with the faculty. (“It’s a transparent house,” said Pedar Foss, a classics professor who is dean of academic life.)

Dr. Casey led the way into the small white dining room, with the built-in bookshelves, that had been a little-used study. Here, he said, is where he holds faculty dinners for 8 to 10 people. “I love dining rooms with lots of books,” he said. “I thought this would be a great place to have conversations about DePauw and the curriculum.”

The dining room was inspired by the great parties he’d been to at a friend’s small apartment on the Upper West Side, where the table was squeezed in among the bookshelves.

He pointed out the color-coded books. Red and orange — “The Economic Value of Higher Education” and “Blacks at Harvard;” tan and beige include “Our Underachieving Colleges,” and “All the King’s Men.” It is one of the stories people tell about Dr. Casey’s house.

Last Christmas, he had offered to put the house on Greencastle’s historic house tour for the first time. While he was traveling for work, decorators arrived to prepare the house.

“I came home to find this winter wonderland — garland everywhere,” he said. “I walked into the dining room and they had taken all my books and put them back on the shelves arranged by color.”

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Adam Gilbert, a student ambassador, sings at a dinner party held at the house. He was accompanied on the piano by a trustee, James B. Stewart.Credit
A.J. Mast for The New York Times

“It’s really strange,” he said, scanning the shelves, “when you realize how many books you have that are orange.”

“Now when I have to find a book, I have to think, ‘What color is it?’ ”

The trustees had raised the money to make the necessary changes to the house, which mostly involved opening it up, pruning overgrown shrubs and trees, repairing water damage, creating a large catering kitchen — in the past the food was prepared off-site — and painting the Tiffany blue dining room in creamy white and silvery gray. Small lights were also installed in the ceiling.

In his rare down time, Dr. Casey unwinds in the private part of the house — a small living room behind the kitchen, with a pair of contemporary sofas, a wooden desk and ladder bookshelves from his previous life. Back stairs lead to his bedroom suite, on the second floor, where there are also four other bedroom suites where he invites trustees, and other visitors, to stay.

“There was one night I was in the private living room,” he said, and decided to sit by the fireplace in the grander, public one. “I had this book, I walked over — it’s a long walk,” he said. “I’m sitting in this room, I was trying to read. I felt like I was in some bizarre Hollywood piece. I left.”

He led the way into the remodeled white kitchen and out to the stone patio, with its new fireplace and white trellised pavilion.

He stood at the edge of the pool and told a story that has already become part of campus lore about the president’s house.

Karl Rove and Howard Dean were on campus last month for a debate. Dr. Casey held a party in their honor before the event. It was a warm afternoon, and people were mingling on the patio.

“So Karl Rove says to me, ‘President Casey, I really want to talk to you, come over here,’ ” he said. “The light was on the pool. I looked down, and I thought, ‘Oh, there’s this huge clump of dead leaves in the pool.’ ”

On second glance, oh, no. “It was a dead mouse,” he said. “Karl Rove reaches over, grabs a napkin, reaches in, grabs this big dead mouse — and throws it in the shrubs. He walks back over.”

He thanked Mr. Rove, and told him, ”You are never to mention this to anyone.”

Later that night, in his opening remarks before a packed auditorium, Mr. Rove announced to half the campus that there was a dead mouse in Dr. Casey’s pool.

A version of this article appears in print on October 8, 2009, on Page D9 of the New York edition with the headline: A House as a Symbol of Openness. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe